Smokable hemp, or craft commodity flower – as coined by NC Industrial Hemp Association Executive Director Blake Butler – is still seeing strong demand.  Large quantities were produced nationwide last year, when a majority of growers high-graded their crop in hopes to upmarket their best flowers for the smokable flower market.  The Carolinas have been a litmus for the MJ look-alike, smell-alike, test-in-the-field-alike flower for conservative states with no MJ programs.

North Carolina’s General Assembly gave hemp flower a close look last summer, nearly banning the product, then delaying the ban, and eventually dropping the greater bill for which hemp flower was one of many issues folded in.  The proposed ban stemmed from the NC State Bureau of Investigation lobbying lawmakers to take action on hemp flower.  The Bureau warned that law enforcement was no longer able to…